Historical Consciousness, Part I: Origins and Characteristics

John B. Cobb

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 2021, vol. 80, issue 5, 1429-1454

Abstract: Although history as a scientific discipline continues to be taught in universities, historical consciousness is being displaced in modern self‐understanding by scientific rationality. There is no necessary conflict between the two. Each is a form of critical understanding, and each benefits from the work of the other. But whereas modern intellectuals perceive the value of analyzing events outside of time and history in purely formal or mathematical terms, the value of understanding the place of events in the larger patterns of history is losing ground. A likely cause of this loss is the decline in intellectual respect for the roots of historical consciousness in the prophetic tradition found in the Hebrew Bible. No other culture in the ancient world focused attention on questions that related personal and collective behavior to the larger context of universal history. As recognition of that remarkable human achievement slowly dissolves in modern awareness, we are losing the capacity to question the wisdom of geopolitical, environmental, and technological changes taking place with long‐term consequences. In a word, we are losing perspective. This is an almost completely invisible feature of the wholesale rejection of the Bible as a source of self‐understanding.

Date: 2021
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